If you’ve found it difficult to keep up with all the twists and turns in the investigation of alleged collusion between Russia and Team Trump, it’s probably because the narrative is so riddled with contradictions.
Alleged leaks first told us that a July 2016 trip to Moscow by Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page was the catalyst for the FBI investigation into collusion. More than half a year later, different reporters from the same news outlet report that it was, rather, boasting by a drunk George Papadopoulos about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton that sparked the probe.
Then, there’s the infamous Steele dossier, funded by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. According to “leaks,” the FBI used the dossier to bolster its case for a FISA warrant to surveil someone connected to then-candidate Donald Trump. Another leak said, “Steele had shown some of his findings to an FBI agent in Rome [in July 2016], but that information was not part of the justification to start an counterintelligence inquiry.” Those aren’t mutually exclusive, but it does call into question the importance of the dossier. So does the fact that after 18 months of investigating its contents, there appears to be nothing substantive in it that has been corroborated.
We call these leaks “alleged” because it’s impossible for the public to know if they are true. The word “leaks” implies that what is leaking is a fact, or facts, that someone wants contained but which nevertheless escape. But consider their sources.
The Page story came from unnamed “current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials.” The Papadopoulos revelation came from “four [unnamed] current and former American and foreign officials.” The report that the FBI used the Steele dossier for a FISA warrant came from unidentified “US officials briefed on the probe,” while the report that the FBI didn’t use the Steele dossier came from unnamed “American officials.”
We’re not accusing news outlets of making up their sources. But the number of contradictions demonstrate as a matter of simple and ineluctable logic that some of the “leakers” are not telling the truth. They may be mistaken, and they may be lying. Reporters may have been duped, or they may not have given an accurate characterization of the information they received.
The leaking or misdirection by unidentified and perhaps malicious intelligence officials has become so incontinent that Republican members of Congress are calling for the head of President Trump’s attorney general. As Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a Washington Examiner op-ed: “How would New York Times reporters know any of this information when the FBI and DOJ are prohibited from talking about ongoing investigations? How many FBI agents and DOJ officials have illegally discussed aspects of an ongoing investigation with reporters? When will it stop?” The two leaders of the House Freedom Caucus go on to call for the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his failure to “bring all of this improper behavior to light and stop further violations.”
The FBI has not complied in providing documents requested by congressional investigators. It has repeatedly ignored Congress, the very body that holds it accountable.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., shouldn’t have to threaten Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or FBI Director Christopher Wray with a contempt of Congress citation just to get document requests fulfilled. Nunes accused the DOJ and FBI of engaging in “a months-long pattern…of stonewalling and obstructing this committee’s oversight work, particularly oversight of their use of the Steele dossier. At this point, these agencies should be investigating themselves.”
We don’t call for Sessions to step down, but he and Rosenstein must get their employees to obey the law and stop their illegal leaking. If the leaks are true, and Rosenstein knows if they are, he, Sessions, and Wray must take decisive action to investigate who is responsible and punish the perpetrators. If they are false, the perpetrators should likewise be punished, though not for leaking but for spreading malicious falsehoods.
The firing of Sessions would create a firestorm that would make matters worse. The anti-Trump resistance’s hair would catch fire, even though they excoriate Sessions themselves. But the men who run the Justice Department and the FBI must comply with Congress, the first official body of the Constitution. No federal body is superior to Congress. It must do its oversight job, and it must take steps to ensure that senior executives do not obstruct it from doing so.
